than return to Australia. She remembers being surrounded by nuns and a pussy cat under the table in the birthing suite. The family lived in Hoskins St in Rabaul Town in the highest house on the hill overlooking Simpsons Harbour, and right next to a red flashing harbour light that guided ships in safely. The family liked to joke that they lived in ‘the red light district’. Liz, along with her parents and older sisters Tamzin, Nicola and Tiffany, were all “absolutely mad fishermen”, stalwarts of the Rabaul Yacht Club where they would take out their boat, The Albatross , whenever possible. “I grew up on the scent of fish and diesel,” Liz says proudly. She won so many trophies for fishing that one year they made one of the prizes a wheelbarrow so she could carry them all home! In my phone interview with Liz I am greeted cheerfully in a laidback Australian accent. “Ah gidday. My name is Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Liz.” She tells me she was born in Kokopo but lived in Rabaul until she was seven or eight, describing those early years as very happy ones. “I remember life there as one big adventure after another!” Among the highlights were snorkelling in the waters around the volcano island in the harbour, boating into Blanche Bay to see old ship and plane wrecks from World War II, exploring the Japanese war tunnels and submarine caves along the road that connects Kokopo to old Rabaul town and the submarine base on the north coast, and finally, staying out on the water fishing until the last golden glimmers from the setting sun disappeared over the water. Liz also tells me that her old family home in Hoskins Street was destroyed during the volcanic eruption in 1994 when the moving earth caused a hidden and unknown bomb
Liz aged nine in Brisbane with her older sister Tiffany when the family came down from Rabaul for Expo in 1988 “I grew up on the scent of fish and diesel”
again in 2000. But back to Liz’s PNG origins. Her accountant parents David and Irene Wardley, both from northern England, moved to Rabaul in PNG in 1979 by way of a two-year stint in Hong Kong and three years in Sydney, Australia. The move
apparently was prompted by David’s distaste for wearing a suit and tie! Three months after they arrived, Liz – their fourth daughter – was born, with Irene making the somewhat unusual choice for an expat at that time to give birth in Kokopo’s St Mary’s Vunapope Hospital rather
Liz’s profile pic on her Facebook page is this dramatic shot of her up a mast during training for the Volvo Ocean Race in November 2013 off Lanzarote, Spain. Liz has competed three times in this race, the world’s toughest and longest yacht race spanning close to 40,000 nautical miles and taking nine months to complete. Photo courtesy of Rick Tomlinson/Team SCA/Getty Images
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